The first Thanksgiving was actually in Florida nearly 60 years before the Pilgrims in Plymouth, some historians say

• Thanksgiving dates back to the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1621, right?
• Wrong, some historians say.

You probably grew up hearing the story that the first Thanksgiving happened in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1621.

But a group of Spanish settlers in Florida may have beaten the Pilgrims to the punch by nearly 60 years, some historians say.

The story of the Pilgrims' feast — the one behind all those elementary school plays and corny cartoon specials — is based on an actual meal that English settlers shared with the Wampanoag people to celebrate an autumnal harvest in the fall of 1621 in their newly established settlement of Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Yet in 1565, Spanish settlers in Florida held a first Thanksgiving-style feast with local Native Americans.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and 800 Spanish settlers landed in Spanish La Florida on September 8, 1565, the National Park Service says on its website. There, they established a city called St. Augustine, which still exists today and is the "oldest continuously occupied settlement of European and African-American origin in the United States," according to the town's website.

Upon their arrival, the Spaniards held a "Mass of Thanksgiving," followed by a meal with the native Timecua people, also known as the Seloy tribe, who occupied the region, according to the National Park Service.

The meal likely included Spanish cocido, a stew of salted pork and garbanzo beans, as well as red wine and sea biscuits, the park service says. Historians don't know for sure if the Timecua people contributed to the feast, but if they did, they might have provided items like turkey, venison, squash, maize, and sea catfish, according to the NPS.

Though the Pilgrims get the credit for the first Thanksgiving, they never actually used the word "thanksgiving" to describe their event, unlike the Spaniards, who did so decades earlier.

Part of the reason why we attribute the holiday tradition to the Pilgrims and not to the Spanish — despite the Spaniards being first — is because the British settlers eventually took full control of the land, not the Spanish, the NPS says.

With control of land and culture, it makes sense that British colonists celebrated their feast, not the one by the Spaniards.

In the years following the first "thanksgiving" feasts, colonists weren't so kind to the native populations who'd occupied the land for thousands of years prior to the settlers' arrival.

Even though the original feasts between the Europeans and the Native Americans were peaceful, settlers and later colonial governments mistreated Indigenous peoples, driving them from the land and decimating the population.

Now, many modern-day Americans recognize the holiday not as a day of celebration, but as a "National Day of Mourning."